Carol was having a more troublesome week than usual. As reigning Queen Saxon of Dorflich, this was a regular occurrence, though it was usually due to something abstract—economics, farming, taxation—or some conniving bitch or lizard of the Big Four Families. It was rare that one of the common folk could make her feel this way. Yet, here it was. And here she was watching the opening ceremonies for the City Tournament. And all she had on her mind was Evert Kallstrom.

The Tournaments were actually one of the better parts of every year. For seventeen years now, two days before the City Tournament, her chief spymistress—though she herself preferred the title Chief of Human Resources—would sit down with her over a glass of wine, and they would go through the character sheets collected on all sixteen of the participants in the upcoming City Tournament. They would consider who were the rising stars, who they wanted in the Royal Guard, who they didn’t want with the Big Four, and how they were going to accomplish all that.

This was how it had been for almost four decades, well preceding her reign. The Tournaments were sponsored by the Crown and the Big Four for several reasons. Most of the public generally found them to be entertainment. Most spiritualists themselves agreed it was a solid proving ground for promising youth, which was to say, it was a good time to show off. For the Crown and Big Four though, this was an opportunity to locate promising talent outside the Royal Guard and their respective families and recruit them. Almost everyone who managed to participate in the District Tournament would end up with the City Guard for at least while, and those with some leadership talent would have the power to become officers therein.

But for those at the City Tournament, most participants would be wooed to join Royal Guard or the personal guards of the Big Four. And for the absolutely best—perhaps one or two a year—the Big Four would keep an eye on them for a “trial period,” then arrange for an age-appropriate family member to seduce and marry them in order to tie them and their bloodline into the family. Indeed, the youth of the Big Four and the Royal Family rarely participated in the tournaments for this exact reason. Their strength and potential were already known within each families’ training establishment. Their loyalties were a given. Most wouldn’t find pride entertaining the masses, though a few at the far edge of their families may enter in an attempt to redeem themselves. And they had to be kept “available” in order bring fresh blood into the family. I.e., the aforementioned seduction.

This year though was different. Her spymistress called the meeting a day early—with no wine, she would add—and revealed that they had almost no information about one Evert Kallstrom. The sum total of their information consisted of a poorly-drawn sketch, that he rang the bell on the high striker, a short narrative of each of his fights in the District Tournament, and that he carried both a staff and longsword, though had not used the latter.

No dojo.

No known affinities.

No birthdate--the speculations were that he was in his early 20s, though he looked younger.

No known acquaintances.

No known address.

He had, as far as anyone knew, appeared out of the blue and come in second at the district tournament, and the observer the Royal Guard had sent opinionated that Evert might have thrown that last fight against one Vincentas Zutautas, who had previously been favored to finish third this year at the City Tournament.

Carol understood that at one time, gathering this kind of information from the participants was difficult, especially when the City and District Tournaments were held back-to-back and there was no centralized record keeping for youths practicing spiritualism. This had all changed with her mother, when she ordered the tournaments to be separated by a week and required all dojos to maintain this basic information in a character sheet. It was a long slog getting the old teachers to cooperate, but within a decade, the Crown and the Big Four Families had done away with the hideously inefficient information-collecting regime they used for recruiting and such resources had been reallocated elsewhere. Subject to a few loose ends—for which an agent on the ground was still needed—the end result of these reforms had been to allow the Crown and the Big Four Families to focus themselves instead on the favor-trading amongst themselves as to potential recruits. On a regular basis, this worked well and had done so for decades.

And so, with a City Tournament participant who had no dojo, Carol and her spymistress found themselves without the intelligence apparatus in place to dig up that information the hard way. With only a few days left, Carol found herself reallocating domestic resources in order to find any other information on him.

The breakthrough—small though it was—came yesterday morning, when one of her agents finally found out where Evert Kallstrom lived and managed to interview his landlady. The contents of the interview itself were fairly banal, and mostly confirmed that Evert Kallstrom had very few connections to the City. The landlady had given them a few leads, including to a local smith and a bakery, though the only interview they had completed before the Tournament was with the West Gate guards, who reported that he went out those gates almost daily.

Possibly the most perplexing facet of these interviews was both the landlady and the guards reporting that Evert had apparently been gone most of the month leading up to the Tournaments. The agent interviewing the landlady had original thought that perhaps Evert had started living with a young woman who had visited the apartment a few times, but that young woman apparently lived in the same building and, in any event, both the landlady and the guards made clear that Evert and the woman had been packed for a camping expedition each time, and that they had been joined by a young man on the second and third trips. No identification of either companion had been made—they appeared not to live in that district—though the young woman—a red-headed brawler—had also been reported by the guards as leaving the West Gate daily for months now, though not with Evert.

It was—all in all—a thorny mess, and time had run out. She had agents out running down the smith and the baker, though in all likelihood, Carol had to decide whether to make a play for the young man against the Big Four soon. Perhaps the sole consolation from this debacle had been reports that the Big Four were equally flummoxed by this young man.

As Carol ruminated over the past week, the final blare of trumpets occurred and the competitors entered. “Charity,” she said, calling her spymistress, “give me the names of the competitors as they walk in.”

While the observer at the District Tournament reported (using his spiritual perception) that Mr. Kallstrom was E-ranked, the observer noted that he had only been able to note this in the final battle, and that beforehand, it appeared that Mr. Kallstrom had been masking his spirit. This was surprising for someone of his ranking, but not unprecedented. Nonetheless, the observer in question had not been much of a fighter, and so his spiritual perception was fairly weak. On the other hand, Carol’s time before the throne—and indeed, sometime after—had been marked with a series of personal victories over the strongest spiritualists in the City and, accordingly, her own spiritual perception was far sharper. Let’s see what Mr. Kallstrom is made out of.

“—kis Aberghast, Lori Sonheim, Vincentas Žutautas, Evert Kallstrom, Rebecca Little, Emigl—”

“Wait! Charity, what was the description of Evert’s lady-friend?”

“Female, between 18 and 20 years of age, bright red hair, frizzy, wild, untamed; between 175 and 180 cm tall, brawler with armored gauntlets, and presumed to be hot-tempered.”

“Hmm… Charity, doesn’t that sound suspiciously like Rebecca Little? Ms. Little and Mr. Kallstrom are conversing rather animatedly down there for competitors who just met.”

“Hmm…,” Charity said as she pulled out a stack of parchment and began flipping through it, until she stopped. “That may be so Your Majesty. Reconsider Ms. Little’s character sheet, if you will.”

Taking the parchment in hand, Carol reviewed the information there. It had not changed since they had reviewed it a few days ago, but she considered it anew in the light of the possibility that Ms. Little and Mr. Kallstrom appeared to have some sort of close relationship. The information there matched what they knew about Mr. Kallstrom’s companion completely. Though if she was, it didn’t seem to lend anything to Mr. Kallstrom, though perhaps…

“Charity, when our agents picked up this information from Ms. Little’s dojo, did Master Wong make any comment?”

“Yes, he did,” she replied, consulting another piece of parchment, “Master Wong stated that Ms. Little was not present for the semiannual updating of the character sheets he conducts in July. The… last update was in January.”

“Not present?”

“It appears that Ms. Little had almost entirely stopped attending the dojo sometime in early May, and other than a single incident, Master Wong had not spent any substantial time with Ms. Little.”

“An incident?”

“It was implied there was an altercation, though Master Wong refused to discuss the matter.”

“Strange. Anything further?”

“When pressed on the matter, Master Wong reportedly implied that Ms. Little had taken a new master and was training under them.”

“A new master? Did our agents make any follow up?”

“No, Your Majesty. When Ms. Little checked in at the District Tournament, she stated her dojo was with Master Wong, and so it was thought that Master Wong was perhaps mistaken.”

This character sheet is listing Rebecca Little as middle F-ranked. And yet she not only made it to the City Tournament, but she prevailed over her E-ranked opponent and won the District Tournament. She shouldn’t have been able to do that. Less than four months under a new master. Maybe…

Carol had thought to use spiritual perception on Evert, but now she had a second target as well. Spinning out her ki into a fine rope, she reached out her spiritual perception to Ms. Little and gently caressed against her aura.

“Charity,” she said firmly in a low voice, “Rebecca Little is E-ranked.”

“Huh,” she replied tepidly. “A breakthrough would explain her performance in the District Tournament, though that would be remarkable progress if Master Wong’s January assessment was correct.”

“Charity,” Carol repeated, “not a recent breakthrough. She’s clearly mid-ranked.”

“Mid-ranked!” Charity exclaimed.

That was one of the few times Carol had ever seen Charity get flustered.

“That kind of growth is tremendous," Charity continued. "That’s what you would expect from a prodigy who’ll hit C-rank one day.”

“It is. And now I’m concerned.” With that comment, Carol passed her perception quickly over the other competitors except for Evert. As expected, a range of E-rankers from low-mid to hi-mid, with one top F-ranker who squeaked in. There’s always one. And at least I know my spiritual perception isn’t out of whack. With a sense of anticipation, Carol caressed her spiritual perception past Evert’s aura. Hi-mid E rank, she thought, just under Vince. Strangely smooth. That implies almost a D-rank level of control, but that would—. As Carol caressed Evert’s aura, her thoughts were cut off by something deeply unsettling. The barest hint of ki, a thread to her own rope, was probing her own spiritual perception. A half dozen times it touched in a bare moment, reaching further and further away from Evert, until about halfway to Carol, the presence dissipated.

Carol felt a chill in her bones over her spiritual perception. If Carol wasn’t high C-ranked, she wasn’t sure she would have even sensed the other’s probing. But she could name every other C-ranker in the City, and knew the flavor and notes of each of their spirits—none matched. And while each of them could spin such a fine thread of ki, it would have been extremely limited in range, and could not have possibly reached out to Evert from where they sat in the stands. Besides, it was an open secret between the Crown and the Big Four that Evert was a black box, and they likely all were probing him with spiritual perception. None would be so gauche as to probe my own spiritual perception, assuming they could even detect it. Which C-ranker wouldn’t know that the Crown and the Big Four were looking at Evert Kallstrom?

That she had to ask the question was almost as unsettling as whatever the answer may be.